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Highly Caffeinated

The Best Part of Waking Up

Did Daylight Saving Time do a number on you like it did me? Every year, I wonder how one little hour makes such a big difference. It doesn’t have this effect when we “fall back” to standard time. I have needed some extra help getting up these past couple days. I love coffee, and some days—like the past couple—the anticipation of my morning cup o’joe is just enough to get me out of bed in the morning.

Yes, it smells good, it taste good, and—let’s face it—it gives most of us a needed jolt to get our day started. Whether you take it black, with cream or milk, sweetened or not, fancy or basic, cups of this hot and soothing beverage can be found in car cup holders, on desk tops, or in the hands of millions of consumers just like me. Lots of people love it iced as well.

Why We Like Coffee

Have you ever wondered how a thing became a THING? You know, like who ever thought it made sense to combine the ingredients to make a cake, why anybody decided to cook and eat the first egg, how ugly sea creatures like shrimp, crab, and lobster ever became edible? I certainly have, and I have also wondered what made anybody decide to compile a bunch of coffee beans, grind them up, and steep them into a beverage.

Consulting Ye Olde Magic Google, I discovered a legend going back to the ninth century and a region in Ethiopia. The tale involves a goatherd named Kaidi who saw how excited his goats became after they ate beans from a coffee plants. He decided to use it as a people stimulant.

Another story tells of an exiled Yemeni healer who chewed the berries of a nearby shrubbery as his primary food source. He found the beans to be hard and bitter, so he first roasted them to improve their flavor and then boiled them to soften them. That turned into a fragrant brown liquid that sustained him for days. Sounds like Cowboy Coffee to me!

Spill the Beans

Both of these make sense to me, but in any case, coffee ground its way through Africa, into Europe, and eventually to our forefathers here in North America during the colonial period. Its popularity logically grew after the infamous Boston Tea Party. Around this same time (late eighteenth century), coffee made its way to Brazil and eventually throughout Latin America, becoming a cash crop for many Central and South American countries.

OK, I’m down with all of that. I even understand why so many people flock to Starbucks to get their fix. I know I love it. Like everything, though, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, so moderation is key. We all need our sleep!

Caffeine also stimulates the skin, which is one of the reasons we use it in our Coffee Coconut Brown Sugar Facial Scrub. Have you tried it yet? Like the beverage, this luxury organic product smells wonderful! Using it sloughs off dead skin cells, moisturizes your skin, and makes your face feel silky soft and yummy.

I’m so glad that goatherd realized what was going on with his goats and that the Yemeni sheik decided to roast those beans he was living on. How would I wake up without coffee? Now, to research what happened with those crustaceans …